The hosting of web portals such as Yahoo.com is competitive. Central to such businesses is the attraction of a large number of users to the portal and keeping such users interested in the portal content. Portal search engine quality is one method for attracting users. However, more is needed to keep users at the portal site, as opposed to linking away from the portal to sites identified by search engine results. Although the way in which advertising revenues are computed can vary, such revenues are generally dependent upon not only the number of viewers that are attracted to a portal, but also the length of time such users stay at the portal. Therefore, portals have worked to extend the amount of interesting content that is found directly at the portal in order to retain users at the portal.
One way to attract and keep users at a portal is to provide useful information including, for example, breaking headline news, financial news stories, feature articles, stock quotes and the like. Such information attracts users to the portal and helps to retain such users at the portal for longer periods of time. However, users have unique interests. What one user finds to be noteworthy, another may find uninteresting. To attract a high volume of users, it is necessary to offer a wide array of topics at the portal web site. This puts a strain on the total web page real estate available at the portal. Of course, informational topics can be nested, so that the portal main page includes a series of links to other pages. While this technique is useful, it is somewhat unsatisfactory because it requires the users to spend a considerable amount of time sorting through lists of topics in order to find a topic that interests the user. Thus, when overused, links to other pages causes users to drop off to sites other than the portal, adversely affecting advertising and related revenue.
Thus, to remain competitive, web portals, as well as other entities interested in attracting large volumes of users to their web sites, have devised methods to reduce web site clutter while at the same time attempting to maximize user interest in the content that is offered on the web site. However, such attempts have been problematic. For example, user interests are constantly changing. What is an interesting story on one day to many users may suddenly become a story that enjoys very little user interest the next day. Furthermore, wrong choices can be made. For instance, a web site editor may select a news story that enjoys little to no popular interest.
Given the above background, what is needed beyond the prior art are improved methods for selecting topics to be displayed on a web site. The present invention addresses these and other shortcomings in the known art.